Ben Rendall Wins NZ Poker Championship Main Event Earning $75,000

Aug 21, 2017

Ben Rendall, the 26-year-old Kiwi poker player, won the Main Event of the NZ Poker Championship in Christchurch last night and took home a whopping $75,000.

Rendall, a doctor from Palmerston North, defeated Kwang Son on 3rd position (winning $39,000) and Steve Ahn finished on second place soon after, winning a total $55,000, to claim the title position after 25 hours of play over the two days.

Around 147 players entered the $1650 buy-in for the Christchurch casino main event tournament. With 78 re-entries a prize pool of $337,500 was created.

Rendall is one of the brightest poker minds of New Zealand and managed to make his way on top by defeating a pool of players, with the like of Shurane Vijayaram, Aussie Millions winner at 10th position for $7,000, along with top players from New Zealand.

Rendall called Ahn’s 1.7X pot over shove on a Q7QT board with J7and won the tournament. Ahn showed 3-5.

Rendall said, "They're the spots you spend all the time studying for and thinking about so when you're in that situation you can make the right call. It wasn't a hard call in the end because of what Ahn had been doing, but I needed to take the time to make sure I got it right.”